


You Alone

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-09-30
Updated: 1999-09-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 12:01:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11335257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: A few different mornings.





	You Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

You Alone by Te

30 Nov 98  
You Alone  
by Te  
11/98  
Disclaimers: Not many names, but they still aren't mine. Sigh.  
Spoilers: One for Sleepless.  
Ratings Note: Weak R, I'd say. Language and m/m interaction. S for Schmoop.   
Summary: A few different mornings.  
Author's Note: For the most wondrous Kass -- a great writer, a great source of inspiration, and a great friend. Happy birthday, ma'am, and many more. (Send your good wishes to , earn good karma.)  
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Pretty Pretty Pares and Alicia for many helpful comments.  
Feedback: I know what I want and only *you* can give it to me. Gimme some sugar, baby. 

* * *

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
You Alone  
by Te  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I like to watch him sleep. 

I used to wonder about that tendency of mine, used to think it had something to do with a dark, twisted need for him to be young enough for me to treat like the child I wonder if he ever was.

But he doesn't look young when he sleeps, or helpless. His focus may soften, but never leaves. His awareness is constant, even if the world he watches changes during the nights. My urge to hold him closer, to make sure he can sense me wherever he goes when he closes his eyes -- there is no battle for dominance here. At least, not with him. 

I want to be near him always.

I want him to know me there, and smile in his dreams for the knowledge.

Simple insecurity... I watch for that smile, and if it does not come I will work harder when he wakes to make *sure* I see it. 

I am a thorough man, and I know if I grumble at this, or glare at that, I am sure to earn a grin, or even a laugh. And the gleam in his eyes will be muted with affection.

Or perhaps with age. It doesn't matter. If my glasses spend more time on my face these days... well, I was always fond of the way they made the light bend.

I shift in my chair, absently consider rising to get the paper off the doorstep, but the patch of sun from the window warms my bones, and he has shifted in his sleep.

A slow roll, soft noise of waking. I should go back to bed. I know he hates to wake up this early, now that he doesn't have to anymore. I know that, when the sheets have cooled enough beside him to make my absence noticeable, he will wake up anyway.

Cat-quick those eyes I've loved for longer than I have ever been able to admit will open, fix me with an amused glare. More fuzzed with sleep than they once were -- he has grown older, as well. He'll say:

"A man could get paranoid under scrutiny like that, Walter."

And I'll reply that it's nothing new for him. It is a ritual between us, and the meaning of the words is... They are worthless, really. A wife will peck her husband on the cheek to say goodbye every day for twenty years, and the passion will fade to some ghost of sepia. But if the ritual was ever forgotten, lost in some fast morning of crying children and burnt toast, neither the husband nor the wife would feel the day was complete until they could kiss and kiss again.

A reassurance that all remains the same.

Perhaps it isn't worthless at all, then. Considering the lives we led, it seems only natural for us to look for some tangible reason to believe we are still ourselves, that there is this place we've built, that there remains warmth and love. 

I will give him this every day I live, and the day I knew he would do the same -- that moment -- was more marriage than words or paper could ever bestow. More joining than any flex and thrust of our bodies beneath the sheets. 

Not that I would begrudge either. I am not so old that the shift of lean muscle beneath skin tanning slow in the bare glimpses of sun he allows it does not make my blood do its best to shift residence south. 

He does to me what he always has, and the bright heat of insanity is as welcome as ever. 

It's time for me to go back to bed.

******

I'm sore. 

I'm exhausted. 

I'm -- I shift -- very sore. 

There is no good reason to be awake. At all. 

Well, all right, thats not true. In my business, sleep is a liability. I remember those grunts from that case I worked all those years back. I remember watching the way they moved, considering the near daily advances in SSRIs -- secret and otherwise -- and wondering if Girardi was still in business. 

He died, of course, but there were times over the next several years that I cursed Cole for being such an Old Testament bastard. That's the trouble with a lot of American religious types -- never *quite* get to that whole Jesus thing.

Blasphemy, I know, especially considering what I would have done had sleep never been able to claim me again.

But I never claimed to be religious.

So, there was *always* good reason for me to be awake, if only to keep the machine in order, but that had nothing to do with today.

Today I am in the bed of a man who had less reason than most to ever want me there, and that man is wrapped around me so tightly I wonder if I should have a few ribs removed for the sake of romance. 

Don't get me wrong -- I couldn't be this snide if I could see his face. One day I was scrubbing the grout, and I made a comment about most kept boys leading plushier lives than my own. Christ, it was just a joke. But the way his face looked when I finally turned to see why I didn't get a snark in return...

So I decided my sense of humor may have suffered during my time in the shadows. I was angry at him for making me feel guilty about a goddamned joke, but only until I came to the realization that shadows had never held anything good. Not for me.

All right, it took a while. I never claimed to be the quickest rabbit out the hole, either. 

But I pride myself on remembering a lesson once it batters its way through my thick skull. Or maybe some lessons are more territorial than others. 

I may still think these things now and again, but I won't let my mind hurt him again.

And I know he'll ease the aches from my bones when he wakes. 

******

Dawn.

I've seen far too many dawns from the cold and shaky end of things to do anything but grimace at another. There's no one to see it, my lover is asleep still, and I will scowl at the sun as much as I damned well please. 

He can't see me to smirk at the immaturity. That's what *he* calls it, anyway. Me, I consider it to be merely an attempt on my part to hold on to youth. I have a romantic soul.

Even I can't help but snicker at that last, and he frowns a little in his sleep, shifts his head on my chest. A little harder than strictly necessary -- but it doesn't surprise me that the man's punishment instincts are as finely honed unconscious as conscious.

He punishes me a little every day.

Every smile, every soft touch... Once I asked how he could, after everything we'd done to each other. He only asked me how *I* could. I started to tell him that was different, but he silenced me with a kiss.

Slow burn and ease. I never dreamed I'd walk to my own pyre with a smile. When he touches me I only want more. When I ask, I always receive. 

God, you and you alone and I pull him tighter to myself. Watch the warm light gild his cheekbones, add beauty to the prosaic reality of the wetness on his mouth.

For a moment, I am panicked. This can't possibly last, nothing sweet ever does. 

And then I remember that, for better or worse, it's all over. That thing I called my life has ground to a peaceful halt, perhaps even forever. And this... this is mine, now, and I need not fear losing it to anything but time. 

The bright panic fades to a simple pain, rough diamond slicing my palm. Precious as nothing else I'd ever experienced, I welcome it all.

But I'll still never admit he was right about the dawn thing.

~~~~  
End.  
~~~~


End file.
